Hollywood

The Unsinkable Jennifer Aniston

The whole world watched as her “perfect” marriage fell apart. Only her closest friends knew what really happened. Now, in Jennifer Aniston’s first interview since she split from Brad Pitt, she spills her heart, and some tears, to Vanity Fair, sharing her shock and confusion over Pitt’s liaison with Angelina Jolie, her desire for a family, and her deep, conflicting emotions (anger, hurt, exasperation, tenderness) toward the man she still loves.

When Jennifer Aniston opens the door to the Malibu bungalow she’s been holed up in lately, she gives me a radiant smile and an effusive hello.

Then she bursts into tears.

We have scarcely sat down in the living room, a serene little haven simply furnished with cushy white sofas and white flowers and white candles, when her face crumples. She is instantly aghast.

“I haven’t been feeling emotional lately, really I haven’t,” she wails, fluttering her hands like Rachel Green in distress, except that this time it isn’t funny.

Other than the 24-hour security detail guarding her safety, Aniston is all alone in the modest rental where she has camped out while dealing with the end of her marriage to Brad Pitt—and its devastating aftermath, which has been far worse than the actual split. The last few months have brought an endless nightmare of hurtful headlines about her soon-to-be-ex-husband, along with blatantly fraudulent stories about herself, in the tabloids and supermarket gossip magazines. Pursued around the clock by the rabid paparazzi she refers to as “ratzies,” she is ambushed even on her own deck by photographers who lurk on the beach outside her door, spying on her every move.

As she squeezes her eyes shut in an effort to stop crying, the scene provides a painful contrast with the last time we met. Little more than a year ago, I interviewed Pitt at the Beverly Hills mansion that he and Aniston had just spent two years renovating. A testament to both his passion for architecture and the couple’s hopeful vision of their shared future, the beautiful old house awaited only a baby in a bassinet to complete a picture-perfect existence.

When I left, they both walked me out to my car. Their home, its windows lit and welcoming, glowed in the twilight. As we said our good-byes, Pitt and Aniston leaned together in the driveway, arms twined around each other. Her head rested trustingly on his buff chest, still pumped up from his rigorous training to play the warrior Achilles in Troy.

They seemed the most fortunate couple imaginable—two beautiful superstars who had hit the jackpot, earning not only fame and riches but also an enduring love. Their fans had long been captivated by the romance of America’s Sweetheart and the Sexiest Man in the World, and now they were ready to begin a thrilling new chapter. Aniston’s 10-year run on Friends was ending, and she and Pitt had vowed to start a family when her stupendously successful television series was finished.

Pitt’s final words to me reinforced the impression of connubial bliss: “I’m happier than I’ve ever been.” But the ensuing months brought an onslaught of rumors that he had gotten involved with Angelina Jolie while filming Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Instead of the joyful announcement many had anticipated from the Pitts, there was only silence. The New Year began with photographs of the beautiful couple strolling hand in hand along the beach on Anguilla, looking relaxed and happy. Immediately the buzz shifted into rhapsodic re-appraisals of the state of their union.

And then came the oh-so-civilized announcement, on January 7, that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt were separating—that their parting was “the result of much thoughtful consideration,” that it was not caused by “any of the speculation reported by the tabloid media,” and that they would remain “committed and caring friends with great love and admiration for one another.”

If Pitt had kept a low profile in the months to come, that might even have turned out to be true. Instead, the ominous drumroll of gossip began to crescendo as he and Jolie rendezvoused in exotic locales, still denying that they were an item. With the paparazzi snapping away, Pitt stepped into what looked suspiciously like a paternal role with Jolie’s adopted Cambodian son, Maddox.

“It was extremely hurtful to Jen that he was seen with another woman so quickly after they were separated,” says Andrea Bendewald, an actress who has been one of Aniston’s closest friends since they were teenagers.

Instead of being reviled as The Other Woman, Jolie posed for pictures on an energetic round of appearances as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations—and then trumped even that public-relations bonanza by adopting another orphan, an African girl whose parents had died of AIDS. In the blink of an eye, the twice-divorced Jolie—previously known as a tattooed vixen with a taste for bisexuality, heroin, brotherly incest, mental institutions, and wearing her husbands’ blood—had morphed into a globe-trotting humanitarian who seemed to be channeling Audrey Hepburn.

For the 36-year-old Aniston, who had expected to spend the past year being pregnant, the pain of watching this spectacle unfold was compounded by vicious rumors about herself. As misogynist as they were false, sensationalistic stories claimed the real reason the marriage ended was that Aniston refused to have Pitt’s baby because she was so ambitious she cared only about her career.

Even now, that sexist slur makes her face darken. “A man divorcing would never be accused of choosing career over children,” she says. “That really pissed me off. I’ve never in my life said I didn’t want to have children. I did and I do and I will! The women that inspire me are the ones who have careers and children; why would I want to limit myself? I’ve always wanted to have children, and I would never give up that experience for a career. I want to have it all.”

Aniston’s intimates note acidly that Pitt could have done more to refute the mean-spirited rumor that his wife wouldn’t bear his child, which reinforced the impression that he had good cause to leave her for Earth Mother Jolie. To some, this looks like sheer hypocrisy.

“When Brad and Jen were in the marriage, having a baby was not his priority—ever,” says one mutual friend. “It was an abstract desire for him, whereas for Jen it was much more immediate. So is there a part of Brad that’s diabolical? Did he think, I need to get out of this marriage, but I want to come out smelling like a rose, so I’m going to let Jen be cast as the ultra-feminist and I’m going to get cast as the poor husband who couldn’t get a baby and so had to move on?”

As the image wars raged in the gossip media, a heartbroken Aniston retreated to her Malibu hideaway to lick her wounds in private, accompanied only by her elderly corgi-terrier mix, Norman, who spends most of his time snoring on his dog bed. Public sympathy seemed to be on her side; the Hollywood boutique Kitson reported that its “Team Aniston” T-shirts were outselling “Team Jolie” T-shirts by a margin of 25 to 1. But that was cold comfort as Aniston was assaulted by one provocation after another.

When the Pitts split up, Brad insisted he hadn’t slept with Jolie, and Aniston accepted his denial. “She wasn’t naïve,” says Kristin Hahn, an executive at the Pitts’ production company, Plan B. “She’s not suggesting she didn’t know there was an enchantment, and a friendship. But Brad was saying, ‘This is not about another woman.’”

The moment he and Aniston separated, however, he re-emerged in what looked like a full-blown affair with Jolie. Struggling to accept a separation she never wanted, Aniston found that the “facts” she had been told kept shifting like quicksand beneath her feet. When I ask about that gracious, no-one-is-to-blame announcement of their separation, she takes a deep breath. “What we said was true—”

As I raise my eyebrows, she pauses for a moment, and then adds carefully, “—as far as I knew. We wrote it together, very consciously, and felt very good about it. We exited this relationship as beautifully as we entered it.”

All Aniston wanted then was to figure out what happened; how did the happy life they’d planned drift so far off course? But everything changed on April 29, when photographs broke of Brad and Angelina frolicking on the beach with Maddox at a romantic resort in Africa. “The world was shocked, and I was shocked,” she says, still bending over backward not to excoriate her ex.

But to say that this news was like pouring salt in the wound would understate its impact considerably; how about pouring molten lava into the hole where somebody ripped your heart out?

And then things got worse.

The skies over Los Angeles are uncharacteristically gray today, and the Pacific shimmers with an opalescent sheen. Although the weather is gloomy, the ocean is calm; waves lap gently at the shoreline, making a soft shushing sound that Aniston has found very soothing lately.

“That’s quite a backyard, in my opinion,” she says as we stand on her deck, watching the hypnotic rhythm of the waves. “Just being able to go to the water’s edge and scream—”

Photographed by Mario Testino for the September 2005 issue.

She grins. “Not too loudly. You don’t want people to think that you’re crazy. But it can be very cathartic.”

She is wearing a white tank top and white drawstring linen pants, with a vivid lavender cashmere cardiwrap around her to ward off the unseasonable chill. Formidably toned by yoga, her body is in superb shape, but despite her tanned skin and megawatt smile she looks fragile and wan.

She remains resolutely upbeat nonetheless, casting her current situation in the most positive light possible. “It’s beautiful here; I love it,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to have a little Malibu beach house, and it feels good. I’m enjoying simplifying things.”

Although the bungalow was dark and depressing when she first saw it, a quickie makeover has transformed it into a cozy sanctuary that’s far more representative of Aniston’s personal taste than the showplace she and Pitt shared, where the décor seemed all hard edges and unforgiving materials. “Brad and I used to joke that every piece of furniture was either a museum piece or just uncomfortable,” Aniston says. “He definitely had his sense of style, and I definitely have my sense of style, and sometimes they clashed. I wasn’t so much into modern.”

I mention Nicole Kidman’s quip after splitting up with Tom Cruise, when she was asked what she looked forward to in her new life without the diminutive husband who had abruptly ended their marriage. “Wearing high heels again,” Kidman retorted.

So I ask Aniston—who filed for divorce on March 25 and expects it to become final this fall—what she’s enjoying about being on her own. “I can have a comfortable couch,” she says with a wry smile.

In the tabloids and celebrity gossip magazines, the soap-opera version of her life continues to hurtle along like a runaway express train, rushing Aniston through major life stages with ludicrous speed: Jen Is Devastated! Jen Is Furious! Jen Gets Revenge! Jen Has a New Man! Jen Is Over Brad! Most of the stories are wrong. (No, Oprah didn’t try to get Brad and Jen back together; no, Jen is not romantically involved with Vince Vaughn, her co-star in The Break-Up, a comedy about a separating couple who continue to live together, which they shot in Chicago over the summer.)

Other reports are just idiotically simpleminded, breathlessly advancing a plot that bears little resemblance to the long, complex, painful experience of getting over a divorce. While the tabloids insist on dividing Aniston’s emotions into neat, distinct chapters, the reality is that pain and denial and anger and resignation all blur together, sometimes at the same moment—and the lengthy process of mourning is nowhere near over.

“There are many stages of grief,” she says. “It’s sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way—cracks you open to feeling. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain. I’m a human being, having a human experience in front of the world. I wish it weren’t in front of the world. I try really hard to rise above it.”

Aniston is struggling to find a deeper meaning in the debacle. “I have to think there’s some reason I have called this into my life,” she says. “I have to believe that—otherwise it’s just cruel.”

Her friends are filled with admiration for the way she’s handled the whole mess. “This woman is basically having a root canal without anesthesia, but she’s really trying not to numb the pain or shove it under the rug,” says Hahn. “She’s grown so much, and she continues to grow on a daily basis, because every time you think, ‘Well, I’ve dealt with this,’ there’s another hurdle to get over. It’s a bit Job-like at the moment.”

Photographed by Mario Testino for the September 2005 issue.

Aniston’s response has been to retreat into her cocoon, “in an effort to take care of myself and my heart,” she says. “I feel like I’m nesting. I love being home. I have friends that come over. My girlfriends I’ve had for 20 years. When things happen, the tribe gathers around and lifts you up. I’ve had lonely moments, sure, but I’m also enjoying being alone. There’s no question it takes getting used to; I’m a partnership person, and if something happens your instinct is to share it—but you’re no longer part of a couple. I definitely miss that. It’s sort of like Bambi—like you’re trying to learn how to walk. You’re a little awkward; you stumble a little bit. The things you would do with your partner, you don’t do. It’s uncharted territory, but I think it’s good for me to be a solo person right now. You’re forced to re-discover yourself and take it to another level. If you can find a way to see the glass half full, these are the moments when you learn the most. I’ve had to re-introduce myself to myself in a way that’s different.”

She doesn’t downplay the difficulties. “Am I lonely? Yes. Am I upset? Yes. Am I confused? Yes. Do I have my days when I’ve thrown a little pity party for myself? Absolutely. But I’m also doing really well,” she says. “I’ve got an unbelievable support team, and I’m a tough cookie.… I believe in therapy; I think it’s an incredible tool in educating the self on the self. I feel very strong. I’m really proud of how I’ve conducted myself.”

A crucial part of Aniston’s strategy has been to ignore the putrid stew of rumor, speculation, and outright falsehood in the tabloid media. “It’s been very important for me not to read anything, not to see anything,” she says. “It’s been my saving grace. That stuff is just toxic for me right now. I probably avoided a lot of suffering by not engaging in it, not reading, not watching.”

She gestures toward Norman, who has roused himself for a moment to check on his mistress’s whereabouts. “It’s like those dog cones,” she says, encircling her neck as if putting on one of the plastic cones prescribed by vets to prevent dogs from scratching their ears. “I have my imaginary dog cone on, so I don’t see anything. It just allows for a much more peaceful life.”

Nevertheless, as Pitt publicly flaunted the instant family he had created with Jolie, the tableaux of their newfound togetherness were humiliating. “I would be a robot if I said I didn’t feel moments of anger, of hurt, of embarrassment,” Aniston acknowledges.

But she tries to keep the lurid details to herself. “She is grieving, but she’s taken the high road,” says Bendewald. “She’s mourning the death of a marriage, and she’s done it very privately. She can have her moments of rage, but she doesn’t want to out him, and that keeps her heart clear. She’s not bad-mouthing him. She doesn’t want to make him the villain and her the victim.”

Indeed, Aniston vehemently rejects the interpretation that she was left for another woman. “I don’t feel like a victim,” she says. “I’ve worked with this therapist for a long time, and her major focus is that you get one day of being a victim—and that’s it. Then we take responsibility for our own input. To live in a victim place is pointing a finger at someone else, as if you have no control. Relationships are two people; everyone is accountable. A lot goes into a relationship coming together, and a lot goes into a relationship falling apart. She’d say, ‘Even if it’s 98 percent the other person’s fault, it’s 2 percent yours, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.’ You can only clean up your side of the street.”

These days, one index of recovery is the fact that Aniston’s sardonic humor is resurfacing. When I tell her that my 13-year-old son is a big fan of hers, she doesn’t miss a beat. “Is he single?” she asks, deadpan.

She’ll toss off a crack about Pitt’s startling transformation into a punky bleached blond. “Billy Idol called—he wants his look back,” she murmurs with a sly smile.

By now she can even talk about those gut-wrenching photos of Jolie and Pitt in Kenya with mordant resignation rather than tears. “I can’t say it was one of the highlights of my year,” she says. “Who would deal with that and say, ‘Isn’t that sweet! That looks like fun!’? But shit happens. You joke and say, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’”

She sighs. “I feel like I’ve earned a superpower shield,” she says. Then, afraid of sounding grandiose, she adds, “I’m not comparing my suffering to other people’s suffering. Everybody has their own.”

Aniston’s friends were particularly horrified by W magazine’s 60-page photo spread featuring Pitt and Jolie as an early-1960s-style married couple with a brood of miniature blond Brads. “You want to shake the shit out of him and say, ‘Your timing sucks!’” says one. “He’s made some choices that have been tremendously insensitive.”

The W feature, which was entitled “Domestic Bliss,” couldn’t be blamed on the paparazzi; not only did Pitt conceptualize it, but he retained the international rights, so he actually profited from it. Aniston’s eyes widen in surprise when I mention that last fact, and she grimaces. “I didn’t know that,” she says. But she refuses to indulge herself in an angry reaction. “Is it odd timing? Yeah. But it’s not my life,” she says. “He makes his choices. He can do—whatever. We’re divorced, and you can see why.”

She shakes her head in exasperation. “I can also imagine Brad having absolutely no clue why people would be appalled by it,” she adds. “Brad is not mean-spirited; he would never intentionally try to rub something in my face. In hindsight, I can see him going, ‘Oh—I can see that that was inconsiderate.’ But I know Brad. Brad would say, ‘That’s art!’”

She rolls her eyes, pretending to screw something into her forehead. “There’s a sensitivity chip that’s missing,” she says.

Aniston’s friends are amazed at her willingness to give Pitt the benefit of the doubt, but they basically agree with her assessment. “I don’t think he was trying to hurt Jen,” says Courteney Cox, Aniston’s dear friend and former co-star on Friends. “I don’t think that Brad is malicious, or a liar. The W thing was his idea, but I don’t think he thought that one through, about what it would look like to anyone else.”

Although Aniston remains determined not to lash out, she sometimes questions her own restraint. “Why am I protecting him?” she exclaimed to one friend, only to continue with what she sees as the dignified course of action.

“I’m not interested in taking public potshots,” she explains. “It’s not my concern anymore. What happened to him after the separation—it’s his life now. I’ve made a conscious effort not to add to the toxicity of this situation. I haven’t retaliated. I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t have a halo that I’m polishing here; everyone has their personal thoughts. But I would much rather everyone move on. I am not defined by this relationship. I am not defined by the part they’re making me play in the triangle. It’s maddening to me. But I had a mom who was very angry about her divorce, and made shots, and I don’t want to play that out. If people are frustrated that I don’t want to do that, I’m sorry. I’m figuring this out as I go along. This is my first time at this particular picnic.”

As befits a storybook tale, the Pitts’ marriage was the first for both of them, and some of Aniston’s fondest memories are from the time they shared before the world discovered their romance. “We had so much fun falling in love,” she says wistfully. “It was so private; we kept it to ourselves for so long. It was something we were really proud of.”

But after the relationship became public, it was always difficult to reconcile their mythic image with the quotidian reality of their private life, which was more likely to involve watching television, ordering takeout, and having close friends over than swanning around on red carpets.

Photographed by Mario Testino for the September 2005 issue.

“We were put on a pedestal, but we were just a couple like anybody else,” Aniston says. “When we were home, we’d watch the shows we loved, and one time there was this program called It’s Good to Be Brad and Jen. It was all about us going to Scotland and Greece and having our matching S.U.V.’s, and it wasn’t my life—I’d never even been to some of these places, but even I got sucked in. We’re sitting there saying, ‘Yeah, boy, it sure must be good to be Brad and Jen!’ So is it our responsibility to demystify this, to say, ‘This is not what it’s like—it’s not that fabulous, not that great’? There’s no doubt our life is fortunate, but … “

But even golden couples struggle with the formidable challenges of marriage. “It’s like the ebb and flow of every relationship,” Aniston says. “It’s hard; it gets easy; it gets fun again. What’s hard to sustain is some ideal that it’s perfect. That’s ridiculous. What’s fantastic about marriage is getting through those ebbs and flows with the same person, and looking across the room and saying, ‘I’m still here. And I still love you.’ You re-meet, reconnect. You have marriages within marriages within marriages. That’s what I love about marriage. That’s what I want in marriage. It’s unfortunate, but we live in a very disposable society. Those moments where it looks like ‘Uh-oh, this isn’t working!’—those are the most important, transformative moments. Most couples draw up divorce papers when they’re missing out on an amazing moment of deepening and enlightenment and connection.”

She sighs heavily and turns away to light a Merit cigarette. “That’s not Brad’s view of it,” she says, glum again. “We believe in different things, I guess. You can’t force a relationship, even if it’s your view of how you would like it to be conducted. Obviously two people leave a relationship because there’s a different thought pattern happening. My goal is to try and achieve a very deep, committed relationship. That’s what I’m interested in, but it’s someone’s prerogative to be or not to be in or out of a relationship.”

“I think Jen wanted to work it out, and I don’t think he wanted to work it out,” Andrea Bendewald observes. “I don’t think he knew what he wanted.”

Nevertheless, Aniston has only kind words about her marriage. “I still feel so lucky to have experienced it. I wouldn’t know what I know now if I hadn’t been married to Brad,” she says. “I love Brad; I really love him. I will love him for the rest of my life. He’s a fantastic man. I don’t regret any of it, and I’m not going to beat myself up about it. We spent seven very intense years together; we taught each other a lot—about healing, and about fun. We helped each other through a lot, and I really value that. It was a beautiful, complicated relationship. The sad thing, for me, is the way it’s been reduced to a Hollywood cliché—or maybe it’s just a human cliché. I have a lot of compassion for everyone going through this.”

As for what went wrong, Aniston rejects any simplistic explanation. “It’s just complicated,” she says. “Relationships are complicated, whether they’re friendships or business relationships or parent relationships. I don’t think anybody in a marriage gets to a point where they feel like ‘We’ve got it!’ You’re two people continually evolving, and there will be times when those changes clash. There are all these levels of growth—and when you stop growing together, that’s when the problems happen.”

Friends say that it was always difficult for Aniston and Pitt to maintain the intimacy they craved while juggling their demanding work schedules, which often required long separations. Those tensions notwithstanding, Aniston believed her marriage was the real thing. “We both did,” she says.

So what happened? “I think—it changed,” she says haltingly. “We both changed.”

She sighs again. “You do the best you can, and I think we did. We did the best we could.”

Both of them? She looks me straight in the eye. “Both parties,” she says.

But nagging questions remain about Pitt’s conduct during the months leading up to their separation. “She was committed to the marriage,” says Bendewald. “He wanted to figure out who he was and what he wanted, but he seemed to want to do it without being married. She wanted him to figure out what he wanted and stay married. He didn’t think he could do that, so at that point she was like, ‘O.K., go figure it out.’”

Throughout that period, Pitt insisted that his relationship with Jolie was not the cause of his marital discontent, but his actions since the separation have suggested otherwise.

“I just don’t know what happened,” Aniston admits. “There’s a lot I don’t understand, a lot I don’t know, and probably never will know, really. So I choose to take away with me as much integrity and dignity and respect for what that relationship was as I can. I feel as if I’m trying to scrounge around and pick up the pieces in the midst of this media circus.”

Does she buy Brad’s claim that he didn’t cheat on her before they separated? “I choose to believe my husband,” Aniston says. “At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything, but I would much rather choose to believe him.”

Their friends are still trying to parse what happened with Jolie. “I don’t think he started an affair physically, but I think he was attracted to her,” says Courteney Cox, who vacationed with her husband, David Arquette, and the Pitts on Anguilla just before they announced their separation. “There was a connection, and he was honest about that with Jen. Most of the time, when people are attracted to other people, they don’t tell. At least he was honest about it. It was an attraction that he fought for a period of time.”

He may have been fighting it, but Pitt virtually checked out of his marriage as soon as he began working with Jolie, according to Aniston’s intimates. “He was gone,” says one.

Aniston has met Jolie only once, when she took a passing opportunity to say hello. “It was on the lot of Friends—I pulled over and introduced myself,” Aniston recalls. “I said, ‘Brad is so excited about working with you. I hope you guys have a really good time.’”

But he soon became emotionally unavailable to his wife, at a time when she needed him desperately. Pitt’s withdrawal coincided with the end of Friends, which Aniston experienced as a huge loss. “That was really painful. It was a family, and I don’t do great with families splitting up,” says Aniston, who was deeply wounded by her parents’ bitter divorce, which happened when she was 9. “It was hard to have such a wonderful constant in your life, a place to go every day, and then all of a sudden it’s not there.”

When she reached out for her husband’s support, she didn’t get it. “He just wasn’t there for me,” she says.

To the amazement of Aniston’s friends, Pitt didn’t even show up for the final taping of Friends.

“He was working,” she says, still defending him, even though movie stars have been known to request changes in a shooting schedule to accommodate events that are important to them.

Although she isn’t talking to Pitt these days, Aniston remains in regular contact with his mother, whom she loves dearly, and she doesn’t rule out a better relationship with Brad in the future. “I really do hope that someday we can be friends again,” she says.

She certainly doesn’t regret her four-and-a-half-year marriage—not even the million-dollar wedding with 50,000 flowers, a 40-member gospel choir, a Greek bouzouki band, and fireworks exploding over the Pacific. (“It was fantastic!” she says.) But she does have other regrets.

“There’s a lot I would probably do differently,” she says. “I’d take more vacations—getting away from work, enjoying each other in different environments. But there was always something preventing it; either he was working or I was.”

She made more profound mistakes as well. “I wouldn’t give over so much of myself, which I did at times,” she admits. “It was that thing about being a nurturer; I love taking care of people, and I definitely put his needs before mine sometimes. It’s seamless; somewhere along the way, you sort of lose yourself. You just don’t know when it happens. It’s such an insidious thing, you don’t really see where it started—and where you ended. There’s no one to blame but yourself. I’ve always been that way in relationships, even with my mom. It’s not the healthiest. I feel like I’ve broken the pattern now. I’ll never let myself down like that again. I feel like my sense of self is being strengthened because of it.”

Aniston’s unhappy family history colored her experience of marriage from the outset. “I come from a fighting family, and I had a tough time arguing,” she says. “Fighting scared me. I wouldn’t speak up for myself. That’s something I’ve learned; I will always speak my mind.”

In recent months, the process of healing from the breakup with Brad has also created a new openness to healing relations with her mother. Their estrangement began nearly a decade ago, when Nancy Aniston gossiped about Jennifer on a television show, and worsened when she tried to cash in on Jennifer’s fame by writing an appalling book called From Mother and Daughter to Friends. Jennifer severed all contact, but she is now re-assessing their relationship.

Although Aniston incurred criticism for distancing herself from her mother, who did not attend her wedding, she offers no apologies. “I feel pretty good about the choices I’ve made. The choice of not speaking to Mom for a while—that’s ours. Nobody else has to understand it. The same thing with Brad and myself,” she says. “I wouldn’t change my childhood, I wouldn’t change my heartaches, I wouldn’t change my successes. I wouldn’t change any of it, because I really love who I am, and am continuing to become.

“Besides, it’s all in the past,” she adds. “This doesn’t kill you. You move on. You can’t let the devastation of a divorce take over and win—let it make you this bitter, closed-off, angry, skeptical person. Then you’re just falling victim to it. You don’t want to shut your heart down. You don’t want to feel that when a marriage ends, your life is over. You can survive anything. Compared to what other people are surviving out there in the world, this is not so bad, in the grand scheme of things. Human endurance is unbelievable. Think of what mothers of soldiers have to rise above! Everything’s relative.”

She looks down at her firm, fit body. “Nothing’s broke,” she says.

Catching the quizzical look on my face, she concedes, “Maybe a little bruised.”

A few weeks later, on a stiflingly hot day in Chicago, Aniston and I are sitting in her hotel suite looking out on Lake Michigan, which is studded with little white boats. I’ve just told her about the gossip magazine that says she’s registered here as “Mrs. Smith.” The report claims Aniston is taking perverse pleasure in making hotel staffers address her as Mrs. Smith, even though they know perfectly well who she is.

The only problem with this amusing tidbit is that it’s not true. “I wish I’d thought of it,” says Aniston, who is registered under an entirely different, although equally humorous, name.

Despite her vow of abstinence, she succumbed to a celebrity magazine the other evening—and immediately regretted it. “I feel like I’ve fallen off the wagon,” she moans. Unfortunately, the first publication she picked up featured an insult from Kimberly Stewart, Rod’s party-girl daughter. “She said I’m homely,” Aniston says. “It literally ruined my night. I got my feelings very hurt, actually. That was my instant Karma.”

She has always fretted about her appearance, although that is often hard for others to believe. Posing for her Vanity Fair cover shoot, Aniston was equally fetching in French-dance-hall-girl black stockings and in a half-open oversize shirt that evoked every man’s favorite just-rolled-out-of-bed look. With her tousled hair, cobalt-blue eyes, and dazzling smile, she seemed the ultimate adorable sexpot. Far from pining away in seclusion, she appeared to be sending a far more spirited message—like “Eat your heart out, Brad!”

Photographed by Mario Testino for the September 2005 issue.

But Aniston has never been able to reconcile the glamorous Jen on page or screen with the self-doubting woman she sees in the mirror, and the current tabloid coverage has exacerbated that gap. “It’s literally two different people—the real me, and the ‘Jen’ they write about, ‘fighting back,’ ‘getting revenge’—everything I couldn’t be farther from wanting to do,” she says. “So I’m back on the wagon.”

When she arrived in Chicago to film The Break-Up, the gossip media, frantic for a new development, immediately plunged her into a torrid romance with her co-star, Vince Vaughn. This affair apparently does not exist.

“I adore Vince Vaughn, but I’m not going out with Vince Vaughn,” she says. “I barely know the guy. We’ve exchanged a wine-and-cheese basket for the start of the movie, and we’ve gone out to dinner with the director and other people. We’ve got to get to know each other.”

But is Aniston seeing him—or anyone else? “Nobody,” she says firmly. “I like a lot of people, but I am sooo not ‘in like’ with anybody. I am really enjoying being by myself. I’m excited that I know there’s somebody out there for me, but I am absolutely in no rush. This is all very fresh, very new. This was a seven-year relationship that was very dear, very complicated, very special. I need to honor it.”

Aside from her initial flurry of tears, Aniston remains calm and thoughtful through hours of conversation with me over the course of several weeks. But there is one final topic to be addressed, and it’s the most hurtful of all. The rumor that Jolie is pregnant with Pitt’s child has swept around the world; some reports even have her finishing her first trimester.

When I ask Aniston about that, she looks as if I’ve stabbed her in the heart. Her eyes well up and spill over. Several long minutes go by as the tears keep rolling down her cheeks; she bites her lip, seemingly unable to speak. Finally she shakes her head; this subject is simply too excruciating to discuss.

“My worst fear is that Jen will have to face them having a baby together soon, because that would be beyond beyond painful,” says Kristin Hahn.

Fortunately, there are many other things to keep Aniston occupied these days. Although she took some time off after Friends ended, she has since shot several movies, and the coming months will bring a series of premieres. First up is Derailed, a thriller starring Aniston and Clive Owen as two married strangers who meet on a train and arrange a hotel-room tryst—only to have an armed man burst in, rape the woman, and beat the man and blackmail him, setting off a horrific chain of events. The film will make adultery look about as appealing as Fatal Attraction did, according to Aniston: “It will be one of those movies you leave and say, ‘The affair thing? Maybe not!’”

Then there’s Rumor Has It, whose plot revolves around a young reporter’s conviction that The Graduate was based on her family, and that she herself is adopted. Mark Ruffalo plays her fiancé, and Shirley MacLaine is the Mrs. Robinson character, with Kevin Costner as the Benjamin Braddock who may or may not be Aniston’s father.

Yet another upcoming film is Friends with Money, in which Aniston portrays a pothead maid whose friends—played by Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, and Frances McDormand—are all married and far more successful in life.

Aniston is also re-evaluating her future role at Plan B, the production company she formed with Pitt and Brad Grey, who has since become chairman of Paramount. Pitt is now assuming the lead role at Plan B, but Aniston says she will still produce movies through the company.

“I’m excited about what the future holds,” she says. “I’m not a fortune-teller; I have no idea how it will play out. People say, ‘What are you going to do?’ I don’t know. I kind of love that not knowing.”

She is trying to outgrow some youthful illusions. Prince Charming let her down, and Aniston no longer believes in one true love. “I think there are many people, many soul mates,” she says.

But she still has faith in the redeeming power of love itself. “It’s out there,” she says. “It will happen. There’s an amazing man that’s wandering the streets right now who’s the father of my children. In five years I would hope to be married and have a kid. I still believe in marriage 100 percent. When I hear people say that they would never do it again, it’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Why would you ever close your heart down?”

She gives me a sheepish smile. “Maybe it’s a fairy tale, but I believe in happily ever after.”